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Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI) shareholders have witnessed an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months.

To most investors, hedge funds are seen as unimportant, old investment vehicles of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at present, we look at the upper echelon of this group, around 450 funds. It is estimated that this group controls most of the smart money’s total capital, and by watching their top investments, we have found a few investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have trumped the S&P 500 index by 24 percentage points in 7 months (check out a sample of our picks).

Equally as key, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. There are lots of motivations for an upper level exec to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this strategy if piggybackers know what to do (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the key action surrounding Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI).

What have hedge funds been doing with Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI)?

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 25% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.

Of the funds we track, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies had the most valuable position in Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI), worth close to $7.7 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Blue Mountain Capital, managed by Andrew Feldstein and Stephen Siderow, which held a $6.6 million position; the fund has 0.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds that are bullish include Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.

As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers have jumped into Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI) headfirst. Bryn Mawr Capital, managed by Ken Gray and Steve Walsh, established the biggest position in Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI). Bryn Mawr Capital had 0.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $0.4 million position during the quarter.

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last half-year time period, Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and 2 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI). These stocks are Trius Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSRX), Novadaq Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:NVDQ), Nordion Inc (USA) (NYSE:NDZ), WuXi PharmaTech (Cayman) Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:WX), and Genomic Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:GHDX). This group of stocks are in the medical laboratories & research industry and their market caps are similar to BRLI’s market cap.